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Les jours Kaya
“This isn’t a night for theater. All the drama will be outside.”
In 1999 the Mauritian seggae musician Joseph Réginald Topize, better known as Kaya, was arrested for smoking weed while performing at a concert. Following his mysterious death in police custody just days later, the island nation surged into riotous violence: a long-overdue demand for justice from the colonized peoples of the East African island nation.
In Kaya Days, the spirit of the island and its people is distilled into a young woman’s daylong search through the uproar for her younger brother, who has gone missing. Amidst the burning cars and buildings, opportunists and revolutionaries, Santee witnesses the furious, brilliant birth of another world. An exhilarating journey into night from small Hindu village to the “big city”, Carl de Souza’s surreal English-language debut, artfully translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman, is a Book of Revelations-caliber explosion of politics and prose, a humid dream-world of revolutionary fervor where seemingly anything—everything—is possible, if only for the night.
In 1999 the Mauritian seggae musician Joseph Réginald Topize, better known as Kaya, was arrested for smoking weed while performing at a concert. Following his mysterious death in police custody just days later, the island nation surged into riotous violence: a long-overdue demand for justice from the colonized peoples of the East African island nation.
In Kaya Days, the spirit of the island and its people is distilled into a young woman’s daylong search through the uproar for her younger brother, who has gone missing. Amidst the burning cars and buildings, opportunists and revolutionaries, Santee witnesses the furious, brilliant birth of another world. An exhilarating journey into night from small Hindu village to the “big city”, Carl de Souza’s surreal English-language debut, artfully translated from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman, is a Book of Revelations-caliber explosion of politics and prose, a humid dream-world of revolutionary fervor where seemingly anything—everything—is possible, if only for the night.
124 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 29, 2021
I knew nothing about Mauritius, nor about Kaya, a seggae (fusion "of sega, the traditional music of the Mascarene Islands, and reggae") musician who was arrested because he smoked pot onstage in 1999, then died in police custody a few days later. It led to days of rioting.
This is a fictional account set in those days, centered around a naive 15-year-old girl who is sent to the city to pick up her younger brother from school. She doesn't find him at school &, instead, gets pulled into the suspended-reality of worlds unknown to her (from being a young, naive girl in a city on her own, prey to a certain extent, to being one of multitudes on the fringes of, then within, riots, looting, & more). It has a stream-of-consciousness feel, occasionally & briefly jumping into the thoughts of others, not just the main character. Some of the Kreol words & slang remain untranslated, partially reflecting the multiplicity of the peoples & languages in Mauritius & the ease of mixing languages. The beautiful, surreal cover reflects the contents of the story -- a delicate balance of ethereal floating, vividness, & singularity, off-kilter & plunged into the depths of the unknown. I'm not quite sure how I felt about the story as a whole (& what references & knowledge I may have missed) but it was an intriguing reading experience.
This is a fictional account set in those days, centered around a naive 15-year-old girl who is sent to the city to pick up her younger brother from school. She doesn't find him at school &, instead, gets pulled into the suspended-reality of worlds unknown to her (from being a young, naive girl in a city on her own, prey to a certain extent, to being one of multitudes on the fringes of, then within, riots, looting, & more). It has a stream-of-consciousness feel, occasionally & briefly jumping into the thoughts of others, not just the main character. Some of the Kreol words & slang remain untranslated, partially reflecting the multiplicity of the peoples & languages in Mauritius & the ease of mixing languages. The beautiful, surreal cover reflects the contents of the story -- a delicate balance of ethereal floating, vividness, & singularity, off-kilter & plunged into the depths of the unknown. I'm not quite sure how I felt about the story as a whole (& what references & knowledge I may have missed) but it was an intriguing reading experience.
October 20, 2021
This one didn't work for me. Short as it is (117 pages in my copy), I was long ready for it to wrap up before the end.
In 1999, the main character Santee (probably 16 or 17 years old) is sent by her Ma from their village of Bienvenue to the town of Rose Hill to fetch her 11-year-old brother Ram (short for Ramesh) from school, because riots have broken out in Rose Hill. When she gets to his school, Ram has already left, so she looks for him. Over the next 24 hours or so, Santee seems to transform from a naive & obedient child into a worldly woman with a mind of her own. And she does eventually find Ram.
The circumstances in which Santee finds herself and her reactions to them required far more suspension of disbelief than I could muster up.
Translated from the French in which it was originally published in 2000.
In 1999, the main character Santee (probably 16 or 17 years old) is sent by her Ma from their village of Bienvenue to the town of Rose Hill to fetch her 11-year-old brother Ram (short for Ramesh) from school, because riots have broken out in Rose Hill. When she gets to his school, Ram has already left, so she looks for him. Over the next 24 hours or so, Santee seems to transform from a naive & obedient child into a worldly woman with a mind of her own. And she does eventually find Ram.
The circumstances in which Santee finds herself and her reactions to them required far more suspension of disbelief than I could muster up.
Translated from the French in which it was originally published in 2000.
June 12, 2022
I'll need a little time to digest what I just read, but first impression: I think I really liked this short, eerie, ethereal little novella.
The backdrop of the story is 1999 Mauritius after the popular Creole Mauritian musician Kaya is killed in police custody and the city begins to erupt into riots.
The story begins with Santee's mother sending her into the city to pick up her brother from school. Shantee always plays second fiddle to her brother, Ram. She didn't study in school and is quiet and timid, viewing him as the one who is more knowledgeable and in charge even though she's older. When she gets to the school, she finds he has already left. So she sets out to try and find him, wandering into the city as the sun sets and smoke hovers over the horizon. Over several days (I think it was multiple days, at least!) she staggers from one danger to the next, through street fires and looters and burning tires and dying men.
The things Santee she witnesses in the riotous city transform her, and by the time she finds Ram she has been forged from a naive young girl into a woman of water and fire and night. At the start of the novella, people label her simply as Ram's sister; but by the end her own sense of self-realization has emerged, her and Ram's identities and power reversed. Her own transformation is representative of the transformation that the city, and I would imagine also the nation, underwent during that period of upheaval. (My knowledge of the history of Mauritius is admittedly lacking but I'm curious now to learn more)
This book was bizarre and sometimes hard to keep straight. There were times when I wasn't sure whether what was happening was real, magical realism, or metaphor. But because the whole vibe of the novella was sort of like a fever dream, I was actually ok with feeling confused - I got the feeling that may have been intentional, and it added to the eeriness.
I don't think this is for everyone, that's for sure - I would recommend it for people who like books that are weird and a bit confusing, but in a way that was atmospheric and ethereal. The vibe it left me with was sort of halfway between When I Sing Mountains Dance and Augustown (not that either of those are a perfect comparison, but that's the closest I can think of right now)
The backdrop of the story is 1999 Mauritius after the popular Creole Mauritian musician Kaya is killed in police custody and the city begins to erupt into riots.
The story begins with Santee's mother sending her into the city to pick up her brother from school. Shantee always plays second fiddle to her brother, Ram. She didn't study in school and is quiet and timid, viewing him as the one who is more knowledgeable and in charge even though she's older. When she gets to the school, she finds he has already left. So she sets out to try and find him, wandering into the city as the sun sets and smoke hovers over the horizon. Over several days (I think it was multiple days, at least!) she staggers from one danger to the next, through street fires and looters and burning tires and dying men.
The things Santee she witnesses in the riotous city transform her, and by the time she finds Ram she has been forged from a naive young girl into a woman of water and fire and night. At the start of the novella, people label her simply as Ram's sister; but by the end her own sense of self-realization has emerged, her and Ram's identities and power reversed. Her own transformation is representative of the transformation that the city, and I would imagine also the nation, underwent during that period of upheaval. (My knowledge of the history of Mauritius is admittedly lacking but I'm curious now to learn more)
This book was bizarre and sometimes hard to keep straight. There were times when I wasn't sure whether what was happening was real, magical realism, or metaphor. But because the whole vibe of the novella was sort of like a fever dream, I was actually ok with feeling confused - I got the feeling that may have been intentional, and it added to the eeriness.
I don't think this is for everyone, that's for sure - I would recommend it for people who like books that are weird and a bit confusing, but in a way that was atmospheric and ethereal. The vibe it left me with was sort of halfway between When I Sing Mountains Dance and Augustown (not that either of those are a perfect comparison, but that's the closest I can think of right now)
October 1, 2021
Kaya Days is an interesting novella about a sister searching for her younger brother in the midst of widespread riots. Santee starts out as a young and naive girl searching for her brother but she quickly gets sucked in by the city and its characters. Throughout her search for her brother, she encounters several men who seek to take advantage of her. She is literally a passerby being controlled by whatever person or situation she’s thrust in. Santee doesn’t have much agency until the end of the story when she transforms from this naive girl to someone completely unrecognizable participating in the rioting and looting.
While I found the story and cultural references intriguing I did struggle with how quickly Santee’s transformation occurred. It didn’t feel as organic as I would have liked and I felt that it quickly spiraled, but maybe that was intentional to match the city quickly spiraling into chaos. Also, Carl de Souza’s writing style is hard to follow at times. While I have no issue with authors not using quotations in dialogue, I did struggle a bit here since things jumped around so quickly. Despite my qualms, I do think Kaya Days is still worth the read.
While I found the story and cultural references intriguing I did struggle with how quickly Santee’s transformation occurred. It didn’t feel as organic as I would have liked and I felt that it quickly spiraled, but maybe that was intentional to match the city quickly spiraling into chaos. Also, Carl de Souza’s writing style is hard to follow at times. While I have no issue with authors not using quotations in dialogue, I did struggle a bit here since things jumped around so quickly. Despite my qualms, I do think Kaya Days is still worth the read.
October 18, 2021
In some ways Kaya Days is a victim of timing. According to de Souza, the work came about as a way of grieving for his friend and superintendent of the school he was teaching at. Pramesh, the friend, died in a fire while looting a toy store during the 1999 riots - riots that were the reaction of the disenfranchised Creole Mauritians to activist and musician Kaya dying in police custody after being arrested for smoking weed. These are the "Kaya Days" that are the window dressing to the novel. I don't think I need to belabor how this would be relevant to the world today, even acknowledging the limits of both my knowledge of Mauritius and of analogy generally.
The story, broadly speaking, focuses on the journey of Santee, a young Hindu girl tasked by her mother with picking her brother Ram up from school on the day of the riots. In the same way the prose is built of long, squat paragraphs held together by commas and context (dialogue neither gets quotation marks nor enter bars), Santee flows through her journey of "empty days, days without memory." There's a cloudy & ruddy mysticism to the journey. Scenes shift from sexual assault to fantastical invocations of Bollywood, from the petty misogyny of bruised egos to Les Mis, all in the span of what could be 1 or 5 or 100 days. Santee moves listlessly, then dominantly, through it as she leaves the passivity of what she calls "Ram's World" (male access to public space) and enters what she comes to see as her own (the flat society of riots).
The problem for Kaya Days is twofold. From my understanding, one of the axes on which Mauritian society is drawn is the disenfranchisement of Creole people as a group by their lack of access to generational wealth (being the descendants of the enslaved) and political structure (the constitution codifies Hindu, Muslim, & Sino-Mauritians for the purposes of the National Assembly, while the Creole population is lumped into the "General Population"). These intersect, of course, and have led to the dominance of Indo-Mauritians in Mauritius since its independence in 1968. In using the very real Creole struggles for equality as flavoring for a Hindu woman developing a sense of personal empowerment, de Souza writes the 90s post-race novel par exemplar.
When asked about whether he reconsidered 1999 in light of BLM, he says both the Mauritian Riots and BLM, and really all "protests and riots" (a telling conflation), are "unexplained and muddled." This is profoundly silly, for they are muddled with many explanations. It's this blindness that's the source of most of the novel's ugliness. It depicts riots as the looting sprees of the rambunctious and finds the cause of Santee's transformation in the temporary reprieve of caring for Ram. He falls asleep, "hand[ing] all the power back to her, but she didn't care about such a gift..." Instead of making known one's want of power, instead of using power as needed, the ideal is to turn away from power in pursuit of interiority. A pious individualism.
But honestly this is more an issue with the decision to translate and publish this book at this time. A better reading of this novel recognizes it as a trauma novel. That's why de Souza describes "protests and riots" in psychological terms. What else do you call a person whose actions feel unforeseeable, unexplained, and muddled but traumatized? In that vein Kaya Days is precisely and exactly about understanding how our relationship to our own self-perception shape the boundaries of our living in the world: Santee is forced to live a functionally secluded life, almost monastic in its nonsocial attendance to domestic needs, and must learn what it means to live freely with others. But it's limited scope makes it a trauma novel that is afraid of overcoming trauma.
And this is the second problem: it can't be compelling in this staid state. As technically interesting as de Souza's free-floating style is, it isn't enough to make his characters compelling to me. I'd say it wants to be experienced like The God of Small Things but ends up feeling like Midnight's Children. While Midnight's Children and Kaya Days are vastly different, there's a waxiness to their approaches to human experience. MC accepts glossiness as part of its absurdist political commentary. KD, lacking politics, reads like the metaphor of an EKG that wanted to sound like an EKG. No character changes, only their perception. No one grows, only their disenchantment. The sense of timelessness isn't an expression of a reaction to the chaos of those days, but the embodiment of a paralysis in which the only thing we can meaningfully interact with is our own minds.
Even the conclusion - Ram sitting on a looted chair on a looted desk, seemingly abandoned by Santee, fretting about the police like a down and out Ubu Roi - is merely a pause. Remembering that this temporary freedom Santee experiences is because of the way in which riots against police brutality break down naturalized social structures, it's hard to ignore that as recent as last year the Mauritian police have tortured people. In another time Kaya Days might have just felt like an interesting approach to an uninteresting premise (and it still is!), but in 2021 it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
The story, broadly speaking, focuses on the journey of Santee, a young Hindu girl tasked by her mother with picking her brother Ram up from school on the day of the riots. In the same way the prose is built of long, squat paragraphs held together by commas and context (dialogue neither gets quotation marks nor enter bars), Santee flows through her journey of "empty days, days without memory." There's a cloudy & ruddy mysticism to the journey. Scenes shift from sexual assault to fantastical invocations of Bollywood, from the petty misogyny of bruised egos to Les Mis, all in the span of what could be 1 or 5 or 100 days. Santee moves listlessly, then dominantly, through it as she leaves the passivity of what she calls "Ram's World" (male access to public space) and enters what she comes to see as her own (the flat society of riots).
The problem for Kaya Days is twofold. From my understanding, one of the axes on which Mauritian society is drawn is the disenfranchisement of Creole people as a group by their lack of access to generational wealth (being the descendants of the enslaved) and political structure (the constitution codifies Hindu, Muslim, & Sino-Mauritians for the purposes of the National Assembly, while the Creole population is lumped into the "General Population"). These intersect, of course, and have led to the dominance of Indo-Mauritians in Mauritius since its independence in 1968. In using the very real Creole struggles for equality as flavoring for a Hindu woman developing a sense of personal empowerment, de Souza writes the 90s post-race novel par exemplar.
When asked about whether he reconsidered 1999 in light of BLM, he says both the Mauritian Riots and BLM, and really all "protests and riots" (a telling conflation), are "unexplained and muddled." This is profoundly silly, for they are muddled with many explanations. It's this blindness that's the source of most of the novel's ugliness. It depicts riots as the looting sprees of the rambunctious and finds the cause of Santee's transformation in the temporary reprieve of caring for Ram. He falls asleep, "hand[ing] all the power back to her, but she didn't care about such a gift..." Instead of making known one's want of power, instead of using power as needed, the ideal is to turn away from power in pursuit of interiority. A pious individualism.
But honestly this is more an issue with the decision to translate and publish this book at this time. A better reading of this novel recognizes it as a trauma novel. That's why de Souza describes "protests and riots" in psychological terms. What else do you call a person whose actions feel unforeseeable, unexplained, and muddled but traumatized? In that vein Kaya Days is precisely and exactly about understanding how our relationship to our own self-perception shape the boundaries of our living in the world: Santee is forced to live a functionally secluded life, almost monastic in its nonsocial attendance to domestic needs, and must learn what it means to live freely with others. But it's limited scope makes it a trauma novel that is afraid of overcoming trauma.
And this is the second problem: it can't be compelling in this staid state. As technically interesting as de Souza's free-floating style is, it isn't enough to make his characters compelling to me. I'd say it wants to be experienced like The God of Small Things but ends up feeling like Midnight's Children. While Midnight's Children and Kaya Days are vastly different, there's a waxiness to their approaches to human experience. MC accepts glossiness as part of its absurdist political commentary. KD, lacking politics, reads like the metaphor of an EKG that wanted to sound like an EKG. No character changes, only their perception. No one grows, only their disenchantment. The sense of timelessness isn't an expression of a reaction to the chaos of those days, but the embodiment of a paralysis in which the only thing we can meaningfully interact with is our own minds.
Even the conclusion - Ram sitting on a looted chair on a looted desk, seemingly abandoned by Santee, fretting about the police like a down and out Ubu Roi - is merely a pause. Remembering that this temporary freedom Santee experiences is because of the way in which riots against police brutality break down naturalized social structures, it's hard to ignore that as recent as last year the Mauritian police have tortured people. In another time Kaya Days might have just felt like an interesting approach to an uninteresting premise (and it still is!), but in 2021 it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
October 20, 2021
I appreciate this novella from Two Lines for exposing me to a setting I knew nothing about - the 1999 riots in the island nation of Mauritius that occurred after musician Kaya was killed while in police custody. However, the story never completely came together for me, and I struggled with the odd, inconsistent tone of the book.
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March 9, 2022This was a fever dream of a novella and I'm not sure I understood enough to give this a rating. The book is set in Mauritius in 1999 during the riots that occurred after a well known musician died in police custody. Santee is a young girl from a rural village (probably in her early teens) who is sent into the larger town to get her brother and bring him home from school while the community is rioting over the musician's death. Her brother is not at the school when she gets there and for the first 1/2 of the novella, she is incredibly naive and is stumbling around, nearly being assaulted while trying to find him. At some point she comes across him in a ravine and the tone shifts and suddenly she is participating in the looting with a great deal more maturity/adult worldview than she had in the first half of the novella. Much of this is stream of consciousness and I might have missed something critical that would have made the transformation of the character from lost and confused and childlike to actively participating in looting and rioting. If you are looking for a read where the author can place you completely in a moment in time, then you might appreciate this. If you want a clear narrative structure, this may be one to skip.
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September 9, 2026I didn’t understand much because I don’t know much about Mauritius, I guess. I also found it very hard to read because there were no chapters. And why doesn’t she just go home at some point?
October 19, 2021
This book I won as a giveaway on this goodreads site.
It was really hard for me to read because it was in a different dialect and then it abruptly ends. Sadly I wont be recommending it.
It was really hard for me to read because it was in a different dialect and then it abruptly ends. Sadly I wont be recommending it.
December 4, 2024
I'll preface this by saying I know nothing about Mauritius (I misread it and thought it said Mauritania) and simply grabbed this book off a shelf in my library on a whim. It's pretty obvious that I missed a lot of meaning from the book because I don't know anything about its context (which strengthens my belief that you cannot separate a piece of art from the context in which it was created -- you can't separate art from the artist, though you can ignore the artist).
My confusion, however, was not exclusively because I knew nothing about its setting. Souza writes in a stream-of-conscious, fever-dream kind of way, and while I normally like that style (it's close to how I write), I don't feel that his prose is strong enough to make it enjoyable. It lacks flowery/poetic language, opting for very literal descriptions instead (unlike the book I just started, The Picture of Dorian Gray), with those descriptions having little apparent (on the surface) connection to each other. It's not a writing style I enjoy, even if I do think there were good bits here and there.
What's not helping either is the deliberately confusing plot. It's not so much that I struggled to understand it -- I've enjoyed and got value out of many things that I don't understand -- but that I struggled to see the point. It's a coming-of-age story in which the MC, Santee, leaves her sheltered life at home to search for her brother in the town of Rose Hill, which is quickly descending into chaos after the police murdered a famous musician, Kaya. She goes through what are in a way trials in which she loses her naive, innocent, simplistic perspective -- moving from childhood to womanhood. A key point of the book that kept coming up was that Santee left her feminine, domestic world into her brother's free, independent, masculine world and is shaped directly by it. But I didn't feel that Souza did anything particularly interesting with these themes, nor the themes of race (especially pertinent on an island with a very racially diverse populace), of order/disorder, of family, or of self-actualization. Perhaps it's because I didn't understand a lot of the book, perhaps because it's because the book is so short, perhaps because much was lost in translation, perhaps because I have read books that better engage with these themes, at least in ways that I connect better with.
Still, there were moments when the story/prose clicked for me. I really enjoyed the section near the end where Santee and Ram (her brother) left the ravine and entered back into town. The book's very fast pacing and disjointed, matter-of-fact prose captured the feeling of wandering through a riotous town going up in flames in a magnificent way (or, at least, that's how I think it would feel. I don't have personal experience with that). Coming after Santee's transformation, the scene pinned down that feeling of calm, serene stasis that comes with self-actualization mixed with the chaotic, constantly changing situation of a riot.
My confusion, however, was not exclusively because I knew nothing about its setting. Souza writes in a stream-of-conscious, fever-dream kind of way, and while I normally like that style (it's close to how I write), I don't feel that his prose is strong enough to make it enjoyable. It lacks flowery/poetic language, opting for very literal descriptions instead (unlike the book I just started, The Picture of Dorian Gray), with those descriptions having little apparent (on the surface) connection to each other. It's not a writing style I enjoy, even if I do think there were good bits here and there.
What's not helping either is the deliberately confusing plot. It's not so much that I struggled to understand it -- I've enjoyed and got value out of many things that I don't understand -- but that I struggled to see the point. It's a coming-of-age story in which the MC, Santee, leaves her sheltered life at home to search for her brother in the town of Rose Hill, which is quickly descending into chaos after the police murdered a famous musician, Kaya. She goes through what are in a way trials in which she loses her naive, innocent, simplistic perspective -- moving from childhood to womanhood. A key point of the book that kept coming up was that Santee left her feminine, domestic world into her brother's free, independent, masculine world and is shaped directly by it. But I didn't feel that Souza did anything particularly interesting with these themes, nor the themes of race (especially pertinent on an island with a very racially diverse populace), of order/disorder, of family, or of self-actualization. Perhaps it's because I didn't understand a lot of the book, perhaps because it's because the book is so short, perhaps because much was lost in translation, perhaps because I have read books that better engage with these themes, at least in ways that I connect better with.
Still, there were moments when the story/prose clicked for me. I really enjoyed the section near the end where Santee and Ram (her brother) left the ravine and entered back into town. The book's very fast pacing and disjointed, matter-of-fact prose captured the feeling of wandering through a riotous town going up in flames in a magnificent way (or, at least, that's how I think it would feel. I don't have personal experience with that). Coming after Santee's transformation, the scene pinned down that feeling of calm, serene stasis that comes with self-actualization mixed with the chaotic, constantly changing situation of a riot.
October 7, 2021
This book was a roller coaster!
It is set in the island nation of Mauritius in 1999. We follow young Santee, a girl who is tasked with getting her little brother from school. This might seem like an easy task but this all happens right in the middle of civil unrest in the island after a seggae musician is killed in police custody. As Santee arrives at the school, her brother Ram, is nowhere to be found and so she starts searching for him all over the island. The writing is disorienting, it sucks you into the environment, and, as the reader, I felt that I lost control just as Santee is thrown into searching for her brother through the city.
There's a lot to be said about the role of a young woman like Santee in this society, she's not equal to her brother even though he's younger, she has different burdens on her, which are transferred from her mother to her on that same day.
While the historical context is vital to understanding a lot of the nuances for the story, I felt that I was still able to get a lot from following Santee's journey. She is forced to put on "masks" to get into certain places to search for her brother. Through her eyes we see many different sides of this society, which is so culturally rich.
In many moments I felt that there was danger and that added to the pacing and thrill of the ride.
I'd recommend this to anyone who wants an immersive reading experience. Following Santee's journey isn't easy by any means but it is quite interesting. My favorite scene is actually the one depicted in the cover and I think it is one of the first times where a cover has reflected very well what the book is like. You can turn that cover in any which way and it will still make sense while turning everything else upside down. Overall, a great read!
It is set in the island nation of Mauritius in 1999. We follow young Santee, a girl who is tasked with getting her little brother from school. This might seem like an easy task but this all happens right in the middle of civil unrest in the island after a seggae musician is killed in police custody. As Santee arrives at the school, her brother Ram, is nowhere to be found and so she starts searching for him all over the island. The writing is disorienting, it sucks you into the environment, and, as the reader, I felt that I lost control just as Santee is thrown into searching for her brother through the city.
There's a lot to be said about the role of a young woman like Santee in this society, she's not equal to her brother even though he's younger, she has different burdens on her, which are transferred from her mother to her on that same day.
While the historical context is vital to understanding a lot of the nuances for the story, I felt that I was still able to get a lot from following Santee's journey. She is forced to put on "masks" to get into certain places to search for her brother. Through her eyes we see many different sides of this society, which is so culturally rich.
In many moments I felt that there was danger and that added to the pacing and thrill of the ride.
I'd recommend this to anyone who wants an immersive reading experience. Following Santee's journey isn't easy by any means but it is quite interesting. My favorite scene is actually the one depicted in the cover and I think it is one of the first times where a cover has reflected very well what the book is like. You can turn that cover in any which way and it will still make sense while turning everything else upside down. Overall, a great read!
March 8, 2023
“They don’t even stop, they merge with the darkness, where they’re going nobody’s ever found again, into deep-rooted memories of long-lost childhood, playing hooky, a sister with long legs and immense, terrified eyes that had missed him by a matter of minutes.”
Set in Mauritania Kaya Days plays out in a short, visceral burst during the days of rioting that follow the death of the seggae musician Joseph Reginald Topize in police custody. The tight page count packed full of emotion tracks Santee as she searches for her missing younger brother and feels like a fever dream. This translated book set in 1999 had me reflecting about police violence here in the US, contemplating the realities of gender disparity, focusing on family perception, considering colonial legacy and Googling events and music. A density illusion, Kaya Days was heavier and required more attention and consideration than the 117 page count implied.
Set in Mauritania Kaya Days plays out in a short, visceral burst during the days of rioting that follow the death of the seggae musician Joseph Reginald Topize in police custody. The tight page count packed full of emotion tracks Santee as she searches for her missing younger brother and feels like a fever dream. This translated book set in 1999 had me reflecting about police violence here in the US, contemplating the realities of gender disparity, focusing on family perception, considering colonial legacy and Googling events and music. A density illusion, Kaya Days was heavier and required more attention and consideration than the 117 page count implied.
March 19, 2026
In 1999 violence exploded in Mauritius following the death in prison of the singer Kaya (inventor of seggae, the combination of Mauritian sega and reggae). The events are seen through the eyes of a teenage girl searching for her younger brother. Hallucinatory but manipulative (first stop: casino/brothel) and not near as compelling as it should have been, or perhaps would have been had the prose ever stopped to breathe.
November 7, 2021
In 1999 the Mauritian musician Kaya was killed while in police custody. This book takes place during the rioting and looting that occurred after. It is frenetic and confusing, as Santee tries to navigate the crowded streets and angry people while looking for her younger brother, Ram.
This book takes place over 24-48 hours. And during that time Santee goes from being a sheltered, naive girl who seems about 13-14 years old to an active, politically aware woman who is maybe 18--speaking with a prisoner after the crowd breaks in to free prisoners, participating in looting, being afraid of strangers to traveling with different men. I am left wondering if her transformation is meant to represent the Mauritian people (working class?) who were galvanized by the murder of Kaya.
This book takes place over 24-48 hours. And during that time Santee goes from being a sheltered, naive girl who seems about 13-14 years old to an active, politically aware woman who is maybe 18--speaking with a prisoner after the crowd breaks in to free prisoners, participating in looting, being afraid of strangers to traveling with different men. I am left wondering if her transformation is meant to represent the Mauritian people (working class?) who were galvanized by the murder of Kaya.
December 1, 2022
I have… No idea what just happened. I’m not even sure how old the main characters are supposed to be. This was an interesting idea but the whole thing is written as one long never ending essay, which made it very difficult for me to understand and follow.
March 31, 2024
~1.25
I think the lack of my contextual understanding may have inhibited me but additionally, I'm not sure if the translation was the best, especially for the prose (flow of consciousness) within this book.
I think the lack of my contextual understanding may have inhibited me but additionally, I'm not sure if the translation was the best, especially for the prose (flow of consciousness) within this book.
September 13, 2021
A little hard to follow and just ends without knowing really what happened to the character's.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 17, 2022
I found this book to be very confusing.
probably-abandoned
September 9, 2022DNF at 44%. I'm glad I gave this one a shot, but I was honestly confused pretty much the whole time, which made it hard to get invested in much.
July 12, 2023
Took me a few chapters to get fully invested since I kept breaking to google some of the sociopolitical context, but once I was into it I was totally engrossed.
Read
January 18, 2026read around the world: mauritius
March 14, 2025
This is the story of a teenage girl sent out to look for her little brother during the time of a riot. But it really has nothing to do with the riot and is more of a coming of age for the girl. And by coming of age I mean she finds a man. She goes from being very young sounding (at first I thought she was around 12) and seeing her brother like he's some sort of royalty to being freer in her movement through the world because she's now a woman who has, and has returned, male attention. The riot is backdrop, the riot allows the girl to leave her normal rigid world behind and find herself. That was kind of disappointing because from what I gathered she, being Indian, is part of the more privileged part of society and not of the part that is rioting due to the mysterious death in police custody of one of their own. Also. while she's depicted as being freed of the male world of her brother, where he reigns supreme at home, her new world and worth is still being defined by how she relates to men.
The prose was good though. Very dreamy, very unrooted in time so it's difficult to tell whether she has been searching for one night or for days.
The prose was good though. Very dreamy, very unrooted in time so it's difficult to tell whether she has been searching for one night or for days.
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